


a falling star, burning bright

by eugyne (AreteNike)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Kerberos Mission, Role Reversal, Whump, colleen-centric hell yeah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 18:36:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18762094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreteNike/pseuds/eugyne
Summary: When the Kerberos mission disappears, Sam is told a lot of anger-inducing things by well-meaning people. That it's a shame the pilot was so young and untested, a boy with discipline problems instead of the Garrison's star pilot. That it's a shame he took out Sam's wife and daughter with him.Little do they know the three of them are still alive—and they're not going down without a fight.





	a falling star, burning bright

"I still can't believe," Matt had said, at dinner before the mission, "that Mom and Katie get to go to Kerberos, and I don't."

"They need us on the ground," Sam responded. "They have to send their second-best instead." He winked.

Colleen had rolled her eyes, of course. "You'll get your chance when Shiro comes back," she reminded them, but of course she wished—she wished she could bring her whole family along. Sam and Matt, and Shiro and Keith too, because they'd come over for dinner enough times to qualify. But instead she'd have just half her family with her, and the rest she'd only miss.

But now, she's glad they stayed behind. Now, she wishes she could have come alone, somehow, if it meant Keith and Katie wouldn't have to face this, too.

Now they're kneeling at gunpoint in an alien ship. Keith is shouting that they come in peace and why are they doing this—someone knocks him with the butt of their rifle before she can shush him and a bolt of fear runs through her heart as he slumps. She leans to see if he's hurt and the alien behind her wrenches her upright again.

They're led down a long hallway. Keith is dragged after them.

They're split apart then, Colleen and Katie from Keith, and stripped down and forced into prison garb. Katie's face is hard as stone but her hands shake.

"Hang in there," Colleen whispers, "I've got you." She's yelled at by a soldier for speaking but the stone cracks, just for a moment, just a glimpse of that crooked Holt smile.

They can find a way to survive this, Colleen decides. One way or another—as long as she and Katie stay together. If they can get to Keith somehow, all the better, but Keith is a fighter—Keith knows how to survive. She tells herself he'll be okay on his own (she hopes it's true).

Once dressed they're shepherded into a cell full of aliens, and Keith is there too, pacing with fists clenched tight. He rushes right to them and runs his hands down Katie's arms, glances Colleen over.

"Are you _okay_ ," he says, and Katie nods shakily.

"For now," Colleen says.

Katie breathes in a long, shuddering breath, and hides her face in Keith's chest; he holds her tightly and looks at Colleen, searching, in the dim light.

"What are we going to do?" he asks quietly, and it hurts as much as it had when she'd seen them knock him out. He's a survivor, but he's still young—he's still in her care. And she won't let anyone take either of them from her.

"We're going to stay together," she tells them firmly. "And we're going to survive."

She doesn't know yet what they're up against—they've only had a taste of what's to come, she's sure. She hasn't seen an opening yet, and when it comes it won't be obvious.

But when it comes, they need to be able to see it—and they need to be ready to take it.

"Keep your eyes open," she tells them. "We don't know what's coming."

Keith nods, and Katie steps back and sniffles and nods, too.

It's a while—a few hours, maybe, long enough that Katie has dozed off against her shoulder and Keith's taken up silent vigil by the door—before their captors return. They bark until everyone's standing, shove until everyone's out the door, march them down the long long hallway until a faint roar becomes a loud one that echoes around them. There's something bright ahead, and loud, and open, and Colleen doesn't realize it's an arena until one of the sentries offers Katie a sword.

She moves, but Keith moves faster—he mutters a _sorry_ on his way by and grabs the sword himself, shoving Katie back hard into Colleen's arms. He glances back at them once—just once, eyes hard and imploring—and then walks out onto the sand himself.

They can't see, quite, what happens in the ring—but they can hear it. Growls and grunts and the clang of metal, and the cheering, the uproar. The oohs and boos when something happens, and no way to tell if it means Keith is—if he's alive, if he's winning.

She can tell when it's over but she can't tell how it ended.

They don't send anyone else out into the arena that day, though, so maybe he killed whatever was going to kill them first. But they don't bring Keith back, either.

There's no way to track the days except by when they sleep, and by the slow disappearance and replacement of their cellmates. Colleen and Katie stake out a corner and that's where they live, huddled in the dark between trips out to the arena. Sooner or later, it'll be their turn; she's seen no opening yet. She's not sure there will be one in time.

Every time the door opens, she hopes it's Keith; this time, like it so often is, it's someone new. Some alien with claws and teeth—someone who will last a while. They sit down on one side of the cell and don't move again until the sentries come.

It happens so fast—they all gather to be led to the arena and the alien is moving, grabbing Katie, thrusting her ahead of them at the sentries like a shield, and Colleen yells and grabs for her and gets in the way and the alien lunges with their claws and—

Katie screams. Colleen gets a hold of her, pulls her close. "Don't touch her!" she shouts through the pain, but there's a dead alien and a dead sentry on the floor and it's not Katie the rest of them are reaching for.

They pull Colleen away—they drag Katie out of her arms and hold her back, and Colleen fights to get back to her even when the sentries lift her right off the ground. They carry her away, away, until Katie and the other prisoners are out of sight.

They bring Colleen somewhere new; they lay her on a table and then strap her down when she tries to get up. And then they leave and Colleen is left with the blood dripping down the side of her face and her shoulder. She got in front of those claws, and now there are stinging gouges in her skin, and Katie is alone.

But Colleen has never been the type to wallow in her own misery. First things first: she tests the straps. There's a little wiggle room, but not much; she _might_ be able to get out, given enough time, and she doesn't expect that whatever kind of healer they have—if that's even why she's here—is going to be in a hurry to get to her. Maybe this is her opening.

But then, once she's off this table, what then? She hasn't seen enough of this place—she thinks she's still on a ship, so there must be escape pods somewhere, but she has no idea where. Can she find them before she's found?

And can she get Katie out, too?

She lifts her head as much as she is able and looks around. It does _look_ like a doctor's office, more than it looks like a torture chamber, though there aren't exactly any cheerful posters decorating the walls. There's no door, either, just an opening into the hallway. She's not locked in, then, but anyone walking by will see her if she's escaping her bonds.

And no sooner does she think it than a pair of sentries march by. They don't look at her, but she doesn't doubt they see her. If their schedule is the same as by the cells, she only has a few minutes before the next ones come. Now or never. She twists her wrists, squeezing them millimeter by agonizing millimeter through the straps.

She's hardly got to her fingers before someone comes in, though. They've got some kind of alien-plague-doctor mask and robes and they come right up to the side of the bed where she's frozen, heart in her throat.

They make a noise, some kind of disgruntled sigh, and smear something on her wounds that stings badly enough to bring tears to her eyes. She grits her teeth and refuses to let the alien hear her pain.

And just like that, they walk away again; in the doorway, they stop to say something in their harsh language to the sentries, who turn into the room. They unstrap her from the table and pay no mind to her struggles as they haul her off down the hall again.

She's not exactly familiar with the halls here, but the turns they take feel different than the ones that brought her to the room. They're dragging her backwards and she can't see where they're going—but she can see when the doorway she catches her heels on opens into a much larger space. It's loud here, but not like the arena is loud; it's loud like the launch pad was as the engines pushed them off the ground and off to Kerberos.

It's a hangar. She takes note of the ships she passes—and then they take her _up_ and they're taking her off this ship, aren't they?

Now she _does_ yell, and manages to wrench one of her arms free of a sentry to grab the edge of the ship's entrance. If they want to take her away from Katie, she won't make it easy on them. She succeeds only in dislocating her shoulder before they detach her from the entrance and toss her into the back of the ship.

For a moment, she lies crumpled on the floor. Her whole body is aching now, and maybe, if she were younger, if she were stronger—but she can't give up _yet._ She staggers up to her feet, leaning on the wall for support with her good arm.

The hold of this ship has a couple of other prisoners. They watch her with sunken, dead eyes as she pops her shoulder back into place with a gasp, before she tries to wedge her fingers into the door to pry it open. The ship shudders and the engine starts and she yells and pounds on the door, feels around for any sort of lock or mechanism to open it, and finds nothing.

They took Keith away. Now they're taking Colleen away, and Katie will be left in the arena alone—no one to step in next time she has to fight. They've been separated.

Their best chance of survival was together, but damned if she won't survive this alone, through spite if nothing else.

The ship lifts off, and she finally slumps to the floor. She has to bide her time, again, then, conserve her energy. She doesn't know where they're taking her or what will happen when she gets there, but she'll take what comes as it comes, and move from there. Sooner or later, she'll find an opening, and she'll take it.

After all, she has her family to find.

**Author's Note:**

> helloooooo i wrote this for the vld whump & h/c zine! theyre selling extras!! [go check it out!!!](https://vldwhumpzine.tumblr.com/post/184636552744/extras-sales-now-open-for-if-you-need-me-a-vld)


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